“He said the row of five nearest the water.”
“Did he tell you how to enter?”
“That I had no time to learn. But, madame, if a man went in and out of this underground house, surely you and I can do the same. Here be five stumps—the row nearest the river.”
They went to the central stump. It had a nest of decayed yellow wood within, crumbled down by the tooth of the air, but probing could not make it hollow.
“Perhaps he deceived you about his house,” said Claire.
Massawippa met her apprehension with dark seriousness.
“It would be the worst about the boat,” she replied. “I counted on that boat all day, so that I have not thought what to do without it.”
“Massawippa held her blanket out to canopy her eyes.”